


White Horse

by molot



Category: Three Kingdoms History & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 21:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3223412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molot/pseuds/molot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For someone who doesn't like drinking, Xun Yu does far too much of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Horse

He is forty-nine, and his finest wine is bile against his lips.  
  
It's the worst time of spring, when newborn sprouts are blanketed by snow, and he watches the chill escape his lips in white wisps. Heat from his body isn't enough to warm the wine cup, but the tips of his fingers are numb from effort.

The cup is made of jade, with folding patterns along the sides. He's become familiar with the pattern over the years; when his mind wanders, he follows the engraved twists with the pad of this thumb until his fingers remember their paths. When he's angry, he clenches it in his palm, hard enough to leave its mark in white-lined flesh.

Now, he considers, and he drinks.

 

  
He is thirty-three, Cao- _gong_ is beginning to earn a name for himself, and he considers Xun Yu a confidant and friend.

"I can't accept this," Xun Yu says flatly, when a colleague tries to press a silk-covered box into his hands.  
  
The colleague murmurs something about amiability, and Xun Yu responds that fraternization between advisers should be minimal on the dawn of big decisions.  
  
Laughter comes from behind a screen, and a half-drunk Guo Fengxiao saunters into the room. The colleague takes offense and quips about farce, but Xun Yu is just relieved that he's properly dressed.  
  
"You know what he really wants to say?" Guo Jia says, draping himself on a chair between the two. "The Xun family hasn't become so poor that it's resorted to taking handouts."  
  
"Guo Jia!" the colleague yells, high cheeks colored by outrage. He considers throwing a punch, but Guo Jia is known for his poor health, and he is still a man of letters.

He tosses the box at Guo Jia's feet, instead. "Then perhaps this will be of some use to you, it does chill wine excellently."

 

  
  
Xun Yu doesn't remember the colleague's name, now, or his face, or the color of the silk that held the cup, but he remembers Guo Jia's derisive thanks.

So he drinks.

 

  
  
"You went overboard," he chastises that evening. He doesn't mind his own reputation much, but Guo Jia's is constantly in a state of plummeting. "I know you're brilliant, and Cao- _gong_ knows you're brilliant, but you can't keep offending his other advisers at every possible opportunity." He pauses. "And, personally, I don't see what's so fun about it."  
  
Guo Jia blows air at Xun Yu's nose. "The day Cao-gong throws me out for something as irrelevant as this is the day I admit I was wrong about the kind of man he is. And, on that hypothetical day, you can come back and tell me how right you were and I'll nod and go along with it and call you _xiansheng_. Actually, while you're at it, could you hypothetically bring me some more booze and snacks? I imagine I'd be poor and famished."  
  
Guo Jia pauses, and runs his fingers along the side of the cup. "I think I'll thank him personally for this tomorrow. He was right, this cup really does wonders."  
  
Xun Yu doesn't argue, because nothing comes out of arguing when Guo Jia is like this. He calls his housekeeper for more wine and a blanket.

 

  
  
He thinks of this, and pulls his own blanket tighter around himself. It's getting colder, and his own declining health is doing him no favors.  
  
He stares out his window, cradling the cup in his palm. He thinks he might be drunk, and he can't move his eyes from the stone steps in his garden, where they had sat that night, and on so many nights since.

 

  
  
He is forty-one, and Guo Jia is getting worse. He turns from dismissing his condition as a minor annoyance to taking morbid fascination in talking about his inevitable death. Still, he does not cut back the drinking, and Xun Yu indulges him. As much as he hates it, it pains him even more to take away the wine Guo Jia loves most. He offhandedly mentions this, and Guo Jia surprises him by grabbing him sharply at the collar.  
  
"What is it?" He nearly shouts in surprise, taken aback by the solemnity in Guo Jia's eyes.  
  
"Wine--this wine--is hardly what I love most in the world."  
  
"Oh? Something Guo _jijiu_ loves more than _jiu_? A true surprise, that is." He trails off when he sees the way Guo Jia is looking at him.

He does not presume, but he has always been the only one to truly understand Guo Jia. He cannot reconcile their beliefs, but he does not waver in his notion the he, Xun Wenruo, understands Guo Fengxiao more than Cao Cao does, just as Guo Jia understands Cao Cao much more than Xun Yu does. It is one of the few convictions that haven't faltered over the years, a confidence sturdier than even what he feels for the future of Han.  
  
He presses a finger to Guo Jia's lips. "Fengxiao, please don't say something childish like that, men our age aren't suited for that kind of frivolity." His laughter is forced, and his empty hands grasp for something to hold.  
  
He drinks.  
  
"Right," Guo Jia says softly, and sweeps the issue with usual demeanor. "What I love most is not the wine, but this very fine cup that Wenruo accepted on my behalf, however reluctantly. Though, in the event of my death, I graciously return it to its owner."  
  
"And its owner accepts, though he doubts he will be in any condition to do so at that time."  
  
"Why, would you become a sobbing wreck?"  
  
"No, but I imagine I would be incredibly busy, recommending advisers to fill your position, just as I did for Xi Zhicai."  
  
"You wound me!" Guo Jia howls with laughter, and fills the cup. They fall back in the flow of easy conversation, and they drink. It is a clear evening, the kind that deserves to have poems waxed about, with plum blossoms making stark silhouettes against the full moon. Xun Yu hasn't had much, but feels as if he drank the whole vineyard.  
  
 

  
  
He is forty-four, and Guo Jia does not die in his arms. He isn't even nearby, but some thousand _li_ away, managing Cao- _gong_ 's affairs. Xun Yu holds no childish desires, but it pains him almost as much as the death itself, and he feels petty for it.

When he can bear to look at it, he wraps the cup and stows it in some corner of his study to collect dust. He contemplates giving it to Guo Yi, but does not know how to explain to the boy that his father cherished a cup, a wine cup that belonged to another man, over any of his own possessions.

Xun Yu's housekeeper finds him passed out on those very steps that night, having drunk straight from the jar for the first time.

Cao Cao writes him afterwards, lamenting the loss of his strategist and friend, but his letters contain no condolences, and Xun Yu does not want to answer them.

 

  
  
The cup in his hands is empty, again, but his hands do not shake as he sets it on the ground.  
  
It's a pity, he decides finally, because plums are still pale bulbs wrapped within themselves, and he would have liked to see them in bloom again.

**Author's Note:**

> Shorter than I intended. Oops.


End file.
